There are moments in the sleek-but-not-too-flashy adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game when the film takes flight. It feels like child’s play, and the audience forgets briefly that the on-screen kids, the smartest in the world, are being groomed to kill at a Battle School in space. The screenplay hews closer to the book than a potential franchise template.

Teens interested in Ender’s Game—both the acclaimed science fiction novel and its big budget film adaptation opening this weekend—may be curious about the recent controversy surrounding author Orson Scott Card’s outspoken views. Fortunately, the library offers an ideal safe intellectual harbor for teaching the media literacy skills that allow them to explore critical thinking questions about the role of social politics and media, and to examine ways in which we might begin to separate art from the artist.